Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby ... Fields and Thresholds ... Doors2
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T e l e p r o x e m i c s
Proxemics is a term used to describe the study of the social uses of space.Most verbal communication in the physical world is supported by levels of informal social uses of space operating at almost subliminal levels. Space and distance are used to define and negotiate the interface between private and public, particularly during the moments leading up to contact. This sense of distance is not only visual but also acoustic, thermal and olfactory, and forms a sensory envelope of kinaesthetic sensitivity that varies from person to person and culture to culture. Architecture and furniture design have always allowed this human sensitivity to the social use of space to find material and spatial expression in its output. We are interested in exploring the possibilities of linking this to telecommunications.
- This sensory envelope is flexible enough to enable us to articulate a whole range of different behavioural possibilities within social situations such as: chance meetings, browsing and by-standing, initiating contact, attracting attention, butting in and splintering away from larger groups, all of which involve the intuitive negotiation of different levels of privacy. It provides us with layers of protection in public situations.
- Even in the case of the telephone, a technology that has been around for almost a century, the use of the answer phone to screen calls suggests that we are still not comfortable with the idea of transparency and instant unannounced communication. Perhaps instead of transparency, we should be searching for ways to create more translucent connections between people.
T h r e s h o l d s
The entrance to a typical English home is spatially layered, consisting at its most basic of the garden path, the doorstep, the hallway and the living room. When calling on somebody, although you may be invited into the living room, you might feel that the extra level of social involvement would be uncomfortable, and insist on standing on the doorstep. The point being that the domestic threshold is a social tool that allows for different levels of involvement, placing the emphasis on a person's own discretion, sensitivity and inclinations.
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Currently,
the boundary between telematic and physical space is clearly defined. Access is
gained through a series of objects that includes faxes, telephones, and
computers. You are either in or out, on or off. Although these interfaces can
offer varying degrees of communicational complexity and subtlety, they are
virtual, and exist only within the object.
We are interested in blurring this boundary and fusing physical and telematic space, creating an in-between zone, a multi-sensory threshold. The interface could move off the screens and surfaces of ultra-miniaturised generic products to become spatial and artefactual tools allowing us to bring some of the more subtle complexities of our social skills into the world of telecommunications.
N e w T o o l s
This new threshold being in itself immaterial and imperceptible, design becomes a strategy for linking this immateriality to the material world in ways that lead to new communicational opportunities.
The slide on the right by Kircher dating from 1650 is an example of how the material can be used to physically articulate an invisible sound field into `places'. By standing by the statue, voices can be heard, or when standing directly underneath the domed ceiling, they can be transmitted. Its spatial nature allows for different levels of experience. For the uninitiated, secrets can be broken, and for those that know, rumours and gossip can be spread.
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From
architecture to furniture and clothing, a vast range of complex responses to
privacy have become embodied in physical and spatial artifacts, underclothes
and overcoats, veils, sunglasses and masks, venetian blinds and one-way
mirrors. Our concern is, that in addressing these sorts of issues as they occur
in new technologies, we will see grossly oversimplified responses which limit
opportunities for forms of aesthetic misuse.
But, at the same time, we want to avoid the risk of merely superimposing the familiar physical world onto new digital situations, of holding back the possibility of a new culture through a desperate need to make comprehensible. How can we discover analogue complexity in digital phenomena without either totally abandoning the rich culture of the physical, nor simply superimposing the known and comfortable onto the new and alien?
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